violence against children WORLD REPORT ON - CRIN

“When children grow up they keep what was done to them in mind and in the end they also do the sameto those younger than them, especially at school. Some people become mentally disturbed.”Boy, 14, Eastern and Southern Africa, 2005 XVI152Violence against children in schools and educational settingstheir spaces strictly off limits to female teachersand girls. The only private spaces for girlswere the toilets, and their privacy was compromisedby missing doors. Female teachersfound it difficult to find spaces that were notpoliced, or intruded upon, by males. 221Where a school is not welcoming or visuallyappealing, it is more difficult to build staffmorale and help children develop a positiveoutlook towards learning. Improving schoolsdoes not necessarily require significant expenditureof money, and can be done also as anextra-curricular activity involving school staff,students, parents and others in the community.In low-income areas of rural India, for example,staff and students have worked together toredecorate classrooms and develop school gardensusing the simplest of materials at hand,though they have found that this works bestwhen schools are secured and protected fromvandalism. 222Research and evaluationAll functioning education systems have mechanismthat gather data, down to the individualschool level, and many have regular inspectionsthat provide additional opportunities forgathering data. The quantity and quality ofthis data vary widely, however, and rarely providesufficient basis for making even the mostapproximate estimates of the prevalence ofdifferent forms of violence in schools and howthe prevalence may be increasing or decreasingover time. One reason for this is that mostschools have no staff trained in data collectionand analysis, and the same is true of mostlocal and district school authorities and somenational school authorities. Since such data areessential in order to evaluate interventions andwhether they are contributing to reductions inviolence, it is highly recommended that districtschool authorities develop their capacityto collect, analyse and report data for monitoringand evaluation purposes.Agreed standards, universally accepted definitionsand classifications of different forms ofviolence in schools are needed, but local issuesshould be integrated into these as well. Thereare models for such definitions and classifications,including the International Classificationof External Causes of Injury. 223 There are alsoInjury Surveillance Guidelines that would helpany education authority at national, district orat school level, to develop its own definitionsand classifications and, also, simple formsand mechanisms for gathering, analysing andreporting data. 224The most widely applied instruments for gatheringglobal and national data on violence inschools are the GSHS, 225 covering an increasingnumber of developing countries, and theHBSC study, covering mostly industrialisedcountries and some transitional countries. 226Other existing instruments are Demographicand Health Surveys and similar surveys periodicallyundertaken by ministries of health(and other sectors) in order to determine, forexample, the prevalence of HIV infection andbehaviour that may contribute to infection.Monitoring and evaluation will help to identifywhich interventions work best and howinterventions might be improved. Also needed